My mom might make these truffles for her book club’s holiday party, which is also to say that my mom soon might be the most popular person in her book club. So to help her out (like she needs help), I’m posting this step by step guide to making the world’s best truffles.

They are very easy and also ridiculously good. They are a hit every time I take them anywhere, and no one ever believes how simple the ingredients are.

Let’s review. The ingredients are 1. oreos, 2. cream cheese, 3. vanilla, 4. chocolate. That’s it. You could leave out the vanilla, even, and they would be fine.

I’ll post the recipe at the bottom, but here’s how the process should look.

1. Open the package of Oreos. Throw those bad boys in a food processor and pulse until they are crushed into a fine “cookie powder.”

Now add the cookie powder to the cream cheese and vanilla.

Blend the cream cheese, cookie powder, and vanilla until you have this shiny mass of deliciousness below. I use a hand mixer because it’s easier. Or because I’m lazy. It’s definitely one of those reasons, though.

And then roll the mixture into balls!

Now dip in chocolate and decorate however you like! I like to drizzle with white chocolate.

Go forth, Mom, and conquer.

Oreo Truffles

1 18-oz. package of Oreo cookies
1 8-oz. package of cream cheese, softened to room temperature
½ tsp. vanilla extract (can be substituted with 1 tsp. peppermint extract for mint truffles)
2 8-oz. packages of semi-sweet baking chocolate (This type of chocolate works best for dipping because it contains much less stabilizer than semi-sweet chocolate chips, so it melts more readily. You can also substitute chocolate flavored bark, which will be less rich. So that sounds like a mistake, right?)

In the food processor, grind the cookies to a fine powder.

With a mixer, blend cookie powder, cream cheese, and extract until well combined. The color should be consistent throughout, with no obviously streaks of cream cheese.

Roll the mixture into small balls and place on wax paper on a cookie sheet. (I think it’s easier to refrigerate the mixture for about 30 minutes before rolling into balls, but you can do it immediate after blending.)

Refrigerate the balls for about an hour.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave.

Dip the balls and coat them thoroughly, then allow them to drain through a slotted spoon before returning them to the wax paper.

At this point, you can decorate them with white chocolate or leave them as is.

it’s football time, and this season has definitely provided a few good opportunities to do some Virginia Tech “cooking” – which I’ve decided to post since I had such a difficult time finding examples online when I took on a few of these projects.

here are the “hokie bird” cookies, cookie cutter purchased at the Tech Bookstore:

definitely the most difficult – and in order to get the maroon frosting that dark, I had to use so much food coloring gel that it stained your mouth. but they were cute.

This batch also included a few of the more basic “VT” cookies:

and here’s the whole shebang on my football platter:

For the Tech/Miami tailgate in Blacksburg, I went with the basic VT cookies but this time I used maroon and orange M&Ms for decoration rather than frosting:

Not the greatest picture and the heat of the baking cracked the M&Ms, but you get the idea. I hope.

And now the fun part… Virginia Tech Jello shots! For the first tailgate, I started off easy – black cherry and orange layers:

pumpkin carving was BACK this year after taking a hiatus in 2008 since I was out of the country. since I have never posted about pumpkin carving but it is moderately related to cooking, this seems like a good place to look at past Halloween endeavors…

starting with the most recent, 2009:

this year featured a tribute to Matt’s beagle, Bailey (although some people seemed to think it was UT’s Smokey, which is fine too). Then the Baltimore Oriole bird. He is supposed to look like this:

I post this because most people seemed to have no clue what that pumpkin was supposed to be (not that I haven’t had that problem before) but this should clear it up.

The last two pumpkins should be pretty clear – Virginia Tech and Washington Capitals. Now, a few people indicated to me that they thought it was pretty lame that I carved pumpkins related to my boyfriend’s interests, but those people didn’t realize that I’ve been at this for awhile, so I was starting to run out of things that were interesting enough to deserve a pumpkin, you know? So don’t be haters.

Back to the pumpkins but proving my point – in 2007, I was already running out of things to carve, so I went with the logo of my place of employment. Yes, I realize how cool this is, and yes, we can be friends. This is what the logo looks like:

And this is how the pumpkin turned out:

Don’t judge me.

Waaaaay back in 2006, this is how the collection turned out:

The “Trick or Treat” one is just terrible and I don’t think it even made it out to the front porch before I trashed it. Here’s a better picture of the three good ones:

And who is that familiar face on the left? I’ve gotten some interesting guesses, including John Denver and Jesus.

It’s, of course, Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin.

I also did these two more generic ones in 2006:

Way back in 2005, I took on the task of carving 5 pumpkins which resulted in a pretty late night.

Clockwise from the top left we’ve got Napoleon Dynamite, the UT logo, Smokey the UT mascot, Mickey Mouse, and a generic Halloween scene.

I’d provide a picture of Napoleon Dynamite for those who might not get it, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. So google it. I remember showing my dad the Napoleon pumpkin and he said “Oh look, it’s Buddy Holly,” so if you’d rather imagine that’s Buddy Holly, go right ahead.

Somewhere around this time I also carved a watermelon basket for my cousin’s wedding. Yes. This happened.

And then…

2004 was the first year of taking this whole pumpkin carving thing seriously, and this is what we came up with that year:

That beach scene on the top left is really struggling.

I know some of you were probably hoping I would “get a life” or “learn a marketable skill” but alas, this is what I’ve done with myself over the last five years.

And let’s be honest… you’ll be looking forward to seeing next year’s editions.